


you're soft as glass, and i'm a gentle man

by getmean



Category: The Pacific (TV)
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pet Therapy, Physical Therapy, Post canon, PostWar, Trust, abortive healing, healing is not a linear path and also not a path with a clear end, old man sledgefus aka the best, physical injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:41:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25655311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/getmean/pseuds/getmean
Summary: They’re both older now, and softer. More prone to hurt. It means that when Snafu shatters a glass jug all over the kitchen floor, all over his and Eugene’s bare feet, Eugene knows it’s time to say something. Snafu is the type of person to let pain go until there’s no coming back from it.
Relationships: Merriell "Snafu" Shelton/Eugene Sledge
Comments: 17
Kudos: 33
Collections: Sledgefu Week 2020





	you're soft as glass, and i'm a gentle man

**Author's Note:**

> my fill for the healing prompt for sledgefu week :~) i worked with my boyfriend on this one: they told me the outline of the story, and i wrote it! so their big brain is to blame for this

It starts with a tremble. 

Snafu, bringing Eugene a cup of coffee; early morning, their eyes still puffy with sleep. Eugene had been watching it coming towards him with a desire reserved only for the first coffee of the day. Watching it close enough that when Snafu’s hand had shook, and splashed a little onto the wood floor below him, Eugene had groaned.

“Clumsy,” he’d chided, and met Snafu halfway to ease the mug from his grip. “Careful.”

Snafu had laughed, and said something innocuous and unimportant, lost to memory. But it’s like once Eugene noticed the tremor, the more he saw it. The shuddering surface of a glass of water as Snafu carries it across the apartment. The way he’s switched from brushing his teeth with his left hand to his right. All the splashed drinks and spilled foods and stains on Snafu’s t-shirts. The way he sits quietly when he comes home from work, and rhythmically presses his thumb in tight circles into the tendons of his wrist. 

The expression of pain on his face makes him look older. Eugene sees it in the mornings the worst; Snafu’s teeth sunk into his lip as he trembles his way through his morning routine. They’re both older now, and softer. More prone to hurt. It means that when Snafu shatters a glass jug all over the kitchen floor, all over his and Eugene’s bare feet, Eugene knows it’s time to say something. Snafu is the type of person to let pain go until there’s no coming back from it. During the war he’d gotten nicked by shrapnel and told nobody, not until it was heavily infected and he was feverish with it. He’d probably have never told anybody, if Burgie hadn’t forced it out of him. 

“Is something wrong?” Eugene asks, into the silence. It seems heavier, after the crash of glass hitting tile. He’s crouched picking up some of the larger shards and dropping them in the dustpan by his foot. Snafu, who Eugene had cajoled into an armchair on the other side of the room, makes a non-committal noise.

It’s funny. Whenever Snafu gets that sullen look on his face, Eugene can see the boy he used to be as clear as day. It normally makes Eugene smile, but not today. Affection takes a backseat to pure cautious worry. It’s easy to overstep into a territory that’ll make Snafu clam up and never properly unfurl. Talking about difficult things with him is a minefield. 

“Your hands,” Eugene prompts, because there’s no use in lying. He knows Snafu hates when he asks pointed questions that he already knows the answer to. “Snaf, I’ve noticed —”

“Been workin’ a lot,” Snafu mutters, quickly, before Eugene can finish. “Hell on the wrists.”

Eugene picks a crescent-shaped shard of glass from under the kitchen counter, and drops it into the dustpan. He waits. From behind, he hears Snafu shift.

“I’m sorry about the jug,” Snafu says, voice muffled. When Eugene looks, his head is tipped back against the back of the sofa, hand over his face. “I know you liked that one.”

“Nothin’ to be sorry for,” Eugene murmurs, and finishes cleaning the mess in silence. 

In the near twenty five years that he and Snafu have known each other, Eugene’s never quite gotten the hang of making Snafu admit to something that’s bothering him. It caused havoc in the beginning, when the two of them were still young and angry and sore from all those years at war. Eugene can’t count the amount of times they broke it off, only to come creeping back together days, weeks, months later. Now, comfortably middle aged, they’ve mellowed to some degree. Snafu isn’t so quick to bite, much more inclined to a slow burning kind of irritation that’s pretty harmless, in comparison. And Eugene likes to think he’s a little less stubborn, though he’s sure Snafu might have some things to say about that, even though he’s just as bad as Eugene. They’ve been butting heads so long that all the sharp points have smoothed out by now. But still, the issue of Snafu and his distaste for vulnerability, no matter how big or small. It sticks in between them like a wall. 

That night, Eugene pointedly stands in the doorway of the bathroom, to watch Snafu brush his teeth. Judging by the dart of his eyes sideways, Snafu knows exactly what Eugene’s doing. His grip tightens on the toothbrush, and when he bends to spit toothpaste in the sink, he asks, “What, can’t wait your turn?”

Eugene glances to the brush, trembling in Snafu’s fist. “Let’s talk about it,” he says, lightly. Snafu, cornered animal that he is, bares his teeth.

“I dunno what you mean.”

Eugene watches him bend over the sink again to rinse his mouth, hand clutched to the side of the sink as he uses the other to splash water over his face. It drips from his chin, running down his forearms to drip from his elbows. Slowly, Eugene murmurs, “It worries me, is all.”

The look Snafu shoots him is betrayed. “Aw, c’mon,” he mutters, flinging the medicine cabinet open to reach for his lotion. Eugene is met with his own reflection as the mirrored door swings to obscure Snafu. He blinks at himself, surprised. Snafu is still talking. “Don’t do that, Gene. You know I hate when you pull that ‘worry’ shit on me.”

He’s right, Eugene does. It’s a surefire way to get what he wants. Snafu is weak to wanting to ease every minute of Eugene’s way through life. He only feels a little guilty for it; this is serious. The broken vase had scared him. Suppose Snafu’s hands lock or go weak like that while he’s driving, or while he’s working? The amount of power tools down at the garage make Eugene feel faint, when he thinks about it. And that doesn’t even include the several-ton cars and trucks he works on. And it’s the garage’s fault, he’s sure. All the twisting motions, the vibrations from the tools boring down into his bones, all the heavy parts Snafu deals with day after day. It was only a matter of time before this happened. 

“I just want you to admit that your hand is bothering you,” Eugene says, and crosses his arms over his chest. His reflection in the mirror looks sallow, and tired. He’s been quietly stressed about this whole thing for longer than he’d thought.

“I did already,” Snafu says, irritably, closing the medicine cabinet firmly. A smear of lotion sits unabsorbed on the back of his arm. Eugene reaches out to rub it in. 

“You know what I mean,” he murmurs, and Snafu deflates. The corners of his mouth pull down, his shoulders lose that defensive stiffness. Still, he shoulders past Eugene to the bedroom. 

“It hurts,” he says, tearing back the covers of their bed. The bedside lamp catches him warmly, softly. Big doe eyes looking dark and wet in the low light when he glances over his shoulder to Eugene, who is still lingering in the doorway. “It hurts,” he repeats, softer. “Shit, I’m sorry about the jug, okay? I just need to rest my hands for a week and they’ll be good as new. This ain’t the first time its happened.”

“It isn’t?” Eugene asks, and Snafu grimaces, and climbs into bed. It’s a silent invitation to end the conversation; neither of them like going to bed in the middle of something. Eugene, however, is resolute. “Snaf, if this keeps getting worse, maybe you need a doctor to look at you.”

Snafu’s mouth curls at the mention of ‘doctor’, eyes flashing angrily as he turns to look at Eugene again. “You always leap to the worst thing.”

“You’ve been workin’ with your hands for twenty years,” Eugene counters with.

Snafu’s thumb is pressed to the knot of tendons at the base of his thumb. “And I’ll work twenty more.”

Their fights are always like this. An endless volley going nowhere, until one of them relents and lets the ball drop to the ground. They’ve gotten better at it, but sometimes it’s just so easy to revert to old habits. Eugene sighs, and smears a hand over his face. 

“We’re not done talkin’ about this,” he warns. The satisfaction is rolling off Snafu in waves. He loves when he ‘wins’. 

Ten years ago, they would’ve stayed up late and pressed the point until someone snapped. But Eugene doesn’t have the energy for it anymore. They’ve both got work in the morning — for better or for worse. Instead, he slips into bed beside Snafu, and they shift and come together in that practised way that comes from sharing a bed for a very long time. Eugene tucks himself up against Snafu’s back, slots his knees behind Snafu’s, buries his face in the downy nape of his neck. He can feel the shift of muscles in Snafu’s arm from their closeness, and touches first his bicep, and then his forearm, the muscles falling still as his fingers trip down Snafu’s arm to find him worrying his fingers at his wrist.

“Sore?” Eugene mumbles, drowsy now he’s pressed up close against the warmth of Snafu’s body. It’s Pavlovian, by now, the way his body knows its time to sleep once he has his face in Snafu’s hair. His own fingers knock Snafu’s aside, and ease over the man’s bony wrist.

“Sore,” Snafu breathes, and they fall asleep like that, curled around each other with both hands hovering over Snafu’s wrist.

———

Their mutual stubbornness sticks. Snafu still refuses to go see a doctor, refuses to let Eugene do anything for him, refuses to take time off work. Instead, Eugene has to watch him make a painstaking cup of coffee every morning, some show from him to prove to Eugene that he’s still capable. It does the exact opposite. His tremor is getting worse, and with that, the farce is too. 

Equally, Eugene refuses to stop badgering him. 

“If you go see a doctor, I bet you could get paid leave from work,” Eugene reminds him, near daily. 

Snafu’s response is always the same. Gruff, and spoken with his back to Eugene. Stubborn as a goddamn mule. “Don’t want time off work. I like workin’.”

Then he shudders his cup of coffee over to the kitchen table, and Eugene fights the urge to drop his head into his hands. 

It continues like that for a time. Snafu seems to hover in that place where his hands definitely aren’t right, but aren’t really bad enough to worry anybody but Eugene. He takes to keeping lotion on the radiators, the heat on low through the winter months and just enough to warm it through. In the evenings, he sits and rubs it into his wrists, while Eugene grades papers nearby and tries to project as much disapproval as he can. Snafu’s a believer in natural healing, courtesy of his upbringing. Eugene is a believer in medicine, courtesy of his. He doesn’t care that half the guys at Snafu’s work are as banged up and aching as him, doesn’t care that it’s par for the course.

“But you don’t _have_ to be in pain,” Eugene says, and they argue. Snafu’s always had a touch of the Peter Pan to him; Eugene knows it frightens him, to have this physical result of age. There’s an element of belief in one’s own invulnerability when you scrape clear from years of war, with no physical signs to show for it. Eugene knows that if it were him that was hurting, he’d think it was unfair. 

Then the minor accidents at work start, and Eugene doesn’t even have time to put his foot down because Snafu’s boss is doing it instead. 

He comes to the apartment, in a breathtakingly stressful move for both Snafu and Eugene. In fact, the news he’s come to deliver almost pales in comparison to the anxiety that comes with a stranger in their home. Eugene watches his eyes flick over the furnishings, over their bookcase, creaking with their shared library. The loveseat. Their laundry, drying in the sun that falls into the kitchen. He clears his throat. 

After he leaves, Snafu goes into the bathroom and locks the door. Eugene lingers awkwardly outside of it, raising his knuckles to tap against the wood but then deciding against it over and over until Snafu, muffled from inside, calls, “Gene, I know you’re out there. Leave me alone a second.”

His voice is thick with emotion. Eugene imagines his trembling hands over his face, and turns away from the bathroom door. 

Ten years. Snafu had gotten that job a few months after they moved to San Francisco, and for the first time in his life, seemed to fit in amongst other people. The military didn’t count; there’s a kind of forced bonding there which reduces everyone to the quick-to-bite, quicker-to-forgive familiarity of brothers. Though Snafu had fit uneasily in amongst all of that, too. That job was so important to him —

Eugene presses his fingers into his eyes, hard enough until he sees stars behind his eyelids. Ten years. It means something, that Snafu hadn’t blew up in his boss’ face. Eugene had seen it, simmering away beneath the surface as Snafu had sat across the table from the man and listened to him. Eugene doesn’t know what it means, but it’s something. 

The man had looked so sorry. “Come back when you’re well,” he’d said, and Snafu’s mouth had twitched. 

Eugene hears something clatter in the bathroom. Needing to do something that isn’t sitting on his ass, replaying the interaction in his head, he stands, and crosses to the table. The coffee he’d made the man sits cold and untouched in front of the seat Eugene had urged him into. Eugene dumps it into the sink, and then braces his hands to the edge of it, lets his head hang. 

The fact that he’d come to their home to tell Snafu is probably the worst part about the whole thing. The gentle way he’d spoken to Snafu. Eugene can never remember the man’s name — it’s Armie, Arnie, something similar, a tough old man with missing pinky finger on his left hand. Old enough to be Snafu’s dad, probably. If Eugene knows Snafu, and he does, that’s probably the most painful thing of all. Snafu may not have a wide circle, but he’s doggedly loyal to the ones in it, even if he has funny ways of showing it. The betrayal of his boss giving him up must hurt more than the fact that he’s lost his job. Because now Eugene knows the extent of it, and there’s no more hiding any longer. Easy to brush Eugene’s care off as neuroticism. Less easy to brush off his stoic old boss finally making him throw in the towel. 

When Snafu emerges from the bathroom, his eyes are red-rimmed. He lets Eugene gather him in close for a hug, but disconnects from it easily, eyes distant. 

“I’m sorry,” Eugene offers, unsure what to say now faced with Snafu’s emotions. He watches Snafu fill himself a glass of water from the sink, and gulp it down. He holds it in his right hand, which tends to shudder less. Eugene’s heart aches when he sees it. “Snaf, maybe it’s for the best.”

“Maybe,” he echoes, dully. The glass gets set aside. Eugene stares at the side of his head, trying to work out what could be going on in there. He’d started greying this year, right at the temples. Normally it makes him look handsome, but today it just makes him look old. The grey hair, the defeated set to his shoulders, the lines on his face deepened in a scowl. “I’m goin’ to bed,” he says, and looks down at his hands. Rough-hewn and worn, littered in shiny pink new scars and silvery old ones. 

Eugene, to his great frustration, can’t think of anything to say. Even if he could, Snafu wouldn’t have appreciated it. Sometimes all you can do is let sleeping dogs lie, and so Eugene lets Snafu brush past him, lets him climb into bed, and lets him stay there, guilty the whole time.

———

Days melt into weeks, and Snafu is still not right. Eugene manages to cajole him out of bed for meals, but beyond that it’s his new permanent haunt. He seems to want to do nothing but lie listlessly amongst the sheets, and sleep. Eugene tries to tell himself that Snafu must be making up for all the lost rest from the past few years, but a small part of him knows better. Without his job, Snafu is untethered, directionless. It’s the one constant in his life, suddenly pulled out from under his feet.

Eugene sits with him most nights, propped up against the headboard with Snafu’s head in his lap, reading to him. He doesn’t know if Snafu listens or not. Most of the time he seems to doze, hands curled close to his chest, a warm weight against Eugene. 

The listlessness is disquieting. Eugene would’ve felt better if he’d blown up, if he’d let that stubborn streak rear its head, anything. It feels more comfortable to be trying to keep Snafu from all the things he wants to do that won’t serve him in the long run. Eugene had half-expected him to show up to work the following Monday, but the weekend had passed, and then the week, and no matter how much Snafu sleeps now the hollows under his eyes only grow.

His hands continue to pain him. Eugene continues to try and get him to do something about it, beyond lying around waiting for them to magically heal. 

“I’m restin’ them, ain’t I?” he asks, one cold Sunday morning they spend in bed with the heating cranked high. Their apartment is nice; high ceilings and hardwood floors, but completely peppered with places that let in drafts. Snafu had been in the middle of seeking them out and stopping them up, when — well. Eugene can put up with another chilly winter, even if it seems to play havoc with Snafu’s joints. His hands have been locked up and painful every morning since this cold snap had started. Eugene has taken to filling a hot water bottle with warm water, and giving it to him to rest his wrists on. 

Eugene, who is making notes on essay proposals in his lap, hums. “I think it’s about more than restin’.” He scores a red line underneath a bullet-point, and scrawls a question mark in the margin alongside. “It’s like expectin’ a broken leg to heal right just ‘cause you keep off it.” 

Snafu is silent. Eugene can hear the slosh of the hot water bottle as he flexes his hands under the covers. “I just hate this,” he says, very quietly, and Eugene pauses in his marking for only a second. Just long enough to glance sidelong at Snafu, who is looking out of the window, the watery morning light on his face. He looks wan, and tired, but Eugene feels a squeeze of affection as he takes in Snafu’s sweet, familiar profile. The fine gold chain around his neck winks in the light as he shifts, and Eugene starts back on his work before he can catch him looking and ruin this fragile moment. “I feel useless, and old.”

“We’re a little old,” Eugene murmurs, lightly, and scribbles, _what do you mean here?_ on the page in front of him. “Been through a lot, too.”

Snafu sighs deeply. “Never wanted to get old. Never thought I would.” He pauses, and Eugene keeps quiet. It takes a moment for Snafu to find his words; he’s always been the same. “Now I’m here I just don’t know what to do with it. Arnie lettin’ me go made this all real.”

Eugene looks to him then. Snafu is still watching the sky outside, face very solemn and still. “I hear you,” Eugene says, and catches the glance Snafu throws him easily.

“Do you?” 

Eugene shrugs. “Would we still be here if we didn’t understand each other?” 

They lapse into silence. Snafu’s shoulder settles up against Eugene’s, their feet tangling under the sheets as he angles himself to look at the work in Eugene’s lap. This close, Eugene can smell his hair, and presses a kiss to Snafu’s temple just because he can. The hot water bottle rests against the outside of his thigh, warm like a hand through his clothes.

“You wanna see a doctor?” Eugene murmurs, nose in the thickly curling hair at the crown of Snafu’s head. 

“Not really,” Snafu replies, but his voice is gentle, and tired. His hand comes up to nudge Eugene’s chin, to urge him into a kiss. Eugene goes easily, feeling lulled by the warmth and the closeness. 

Wednesday morning finds them under the bright white lights of their local clinic. Snafu, bundled to his ears against the cold and nervous. Eugene, reading one of the waiting room magazines and trying to exude calm. It’s not a natural state for him, and he doesn’t think he’s doing a very good job at it. Every few minutes, Snafu hisses at him, “What’s wrong with you? You look drunk.”

“Did you know,” Eugene replies, mildly, “that baking soda can take out bloodstains?”

Snafu groans, and buries his face in his hands. 

Eugene doesn’t get his aversion to doctors. It isn’t even a doctor who comes to fetch them, a handful of minutes later; just a young, smiling nurse, who barely even bats an eyelid at Eugene trailing after Snafu into the room. Eugene can probably count on one hand the amount of times Snafu has seen a doctor, and that includes the medics during the war. He prefers to muddle along with whatever strange cure for what is ailing him that his gramma used, or his momma, or his great-gramma or her great-gramma — it goes on. Eugene suspects that Snafu’s humouring him with this trip, which Eugene plans to use to his full advantage. He’s practically taking notes as the nurse speaks, Snafu’s big hand in her small ones, poking and prodding and making him flex it and ball it into a fist. 

“How long have you been experiencing the pain?” she asks, and Eugene looks at Snafu, curious. His eyes dart.

“Year, year and a half.” His voice is gruff. He won’t meet Eugene’s eye. 

She details a small PT regimen for Snafu to do at home, to strengthen his wrists and hands, and takes him through it in the room to familiarise him. Eugene watches, Snafu’s gloves and coat in his lap, sharply curious. It hurts, to see Snafu struggle through the simple exercises. He’s cat-like in his ability to hide his suffering from people. So effective at it that Eugene would never have guessed at the weakness in his hands if he wasn’t sitting next to him; watching Snafu struggle to close his fist around the soft ball the nurse had handed to him. 

They stop for coffee on their way home. Snafu holds it with one gloved hand, the other cupping the bottom. “Don’t say anything,” he says, tightly, when he catches Eugene looking. His scarf is pulled up around his chin, curls squashed beneath his hat; it means that Eugene can make out only a sliver of his expression. It’s a scowl, from what Eugene can guess. “Not a fuckin’ thing.”

“I wasn’t gonna say nothin’,” Eugene mutters, and they walk the rest of the way home in silence, their breaths fogging in the cold air. 

———

“I’m sure it has to get worse before it gets better,” Eugene says, sat on the floor as he watches Snafu grit his teeth through his daily exercises. The kettle is boiling on the stove, ready for the hot water bottle that always follows PT.

Eugene can see how it strains Snafu not to snap at him. Very evenly, he mutters, “That’s your professional opinion, is it?”

They eye each other; Snafu silhouetted by the window he’s sat with his back to, obscuring his expression just slightly. He’s nothing more than a tight curl of a mouth, dark brows over dark eyes. The kettle starts whistling. Eugene stands to go take it off the heat, giving Snafu a moment to regain his composure. 

Every day isn’t like this, but the majority are. Eugene feels pulled between work and home in ways he never has before. He’s been working as a professor of ornithology for half a decade, and the days have never flown by quite so quickly as they do now. He feels like he barely gets to work before it’s time to rush home, like he barely gets home before it’s time for dinner, and then Snafu’s PT, and then soothing a snappish and hurt Snafu after that. He manages to cram in whatever work he has to do at home once Snafu goes to bed, and then all too soon it’s the morning and the cycle repeats. Snafu’s pain is driving a wedge between them, and Eugene can’t help but feel like it’s all his fault. It feels bad when Snafu misdirects his frustration at his own injuries onto Eugene, but feels worse when he apologises for it. Face tucked into Eugene’s neck, his poor hands cradled close to his belly and wrapped tightly in ace bandages. 

_It’s all a means to an end,_ Eugene keeps saying; so much that even he’s sick of it. It feels like maybe if he says it enough, they’ll crest the top of this thing and it’ll be plain sailing from then onwards. Even Snafu has started repeating it, though its in some unflattering approximation of Eugene’s voice that makes him think it’s just mockery. They’ve been arguing a lot. If Snafu had been a cat hiding his pain before, he’s a snarling, hurt dog now. Pissed off and vulnerable and hating it. It’s not enough to make them wobble but it’s enough to make Eugene linger on the mat outside their apartment, and count to ten in his head before he enters. 

Eugene pours the hot water slowly. Outside the window the street below is quiet, and dark, the streetlamp reflecting back in the puddles the day’s rain had left. It’s hard to switch gears after PT; harder for Snafu, but even Eugene finds himself affected by it. It’s hard to watch someone you love feel pain. And anger normally follows hot on the heels of any vulnerable emotion for Snafu, which is testing in itself. 

“Here,” Eugene murmurs, handing the bottle to Snafu, who settles it into his lap with a murmured thanks. His eyes are downcast, turned on his hands as he settles his wrists over the warmth, but when Eugene takes a seat next to him Snafu leans into his side with a sigh. “Easy today?” Eugene asks, and extends a hand. After a beat, Snafu settles his own over Eugene’s, warmed from the bottle. 

“Not really,” Snafu says, and drops his head against Eugene’s shoulder. “It’s startin’ to get to me.”

The nurse at their last appointment had told them to manage their expectations. It’s been eating away at Snafu since. 

Gently, Eugene says, “You gotta be patient.”

Snafu snorts, and doesn’t reply. He doesn’t need to. They both know well enough the extent to which Snafu’s patience stretches.

“I’m sorry,” Eugene offers, holding Snafu’s hand in both of his own. He taps his thumbnail to the band on Snafu’s ring finger, helpless to say anything that could make this better. “It’ll get better, I know it will.”

Snafu hums. “The nurse said I’ll never get back to normal.”

“She didn’t say exactly that —” Eugene begins, but Snafu barrels over him.

“She did.” He falls silent, eyes on their entwined hands. Eugene’s heart thumps, aches. 

Snafu’s always been one of those preternaturally capable people. The sort of person that Eugene’s sure would thrive on a deserted island, even if it was just for the peace of being alone. It’s gotten worse since he’s gotten older, too; Snafu enjoys Eugene’s company, and his own company, and can tolerate the rest to an extent. It must hurt uniquely, to have to be helped with so much. Some mornings, he can barely lift the kettle from the stove to make himself coffee, because the water makes it too heavy. 

Two days later, they wake early to head out for one of Snafu’s weekly check-ins. They shower together; Eugene massages shampoo into Snafu’s thick curls, and rinses it clean for him. Snafu is quiet, the set of his mouth sulky.

“You growin’ this in, or what?” Eugene asks, once they’re out, rasping his thumb through the thick stubble on Snafu’s jaw. Eugene likes it; Snafu almost always shaves his face once it gets past stubble. Eugene does too, he thinks it’s some leftover influence from the Marines. The other man swats him away, scowling, but there’s a hint of a rare smile curving his mouth as he does so.

“No,” he says, and tips his face to the side as he glances at himself in the steam-fogged bathroom mirror. They’re both blurry, indistinct afterimages in it; one dark-haired, one light. “Scared of cutting myself,” Snafu adds, glancing back to Eugene, who is towelling his hair dry. His expression is guarded. Eugene smiles, indulgently.

“Want me to do it for you?” he asks, and smiles wider when Snafu rolls his eyes, and shrugs. 

They used to do this for each other on Pavuvu. When they were out on a campaign, shaving was an experience you got done as quickly and shoddily as possible; most men walked around with stubble bordering on full beards because it was such a goddamn pain to do. On Pavuvu, it was different. Some men who were a particularly dab hand with a razor or a pair of shears would trade cigarettes for shaves, for haircuts. Eugene was so fresh faced that he barely needed to shave, but when he did Snafu often did it for him, and vice-versa. They haven’t had to do it since, so it’s with a comfortable sort of nostalgia that Eugene sits Snafu down on the toilet lid, and lathers his face up.

“I’m trusting you,” Snafu warns, mumbled behind shaving foam. Eugene, lip caught between his teeth, ignores him. If Snafu of twenty years ago had let Eugene near his face with a razor, the Snafu sat in front of him can as well. 

The razor rasps over stubble, the quiet sound magnified in their small bathroom. Still steamy, despite the little window open over their heads, letting in the smell of another cold and rainy day. Eugene thinks about the coffee they’ll get after Snafu’s appointment, thinks about what he’ll make for dinner. Wonders at what Snafu is thinking about, eyes on the ceiling and face very still as Eugene scrapes the razor carefully over his cheeks. The slosh of water in the sink as Eugene dips the razor clean, the smell of the shaving foam. It’s so synonymous with Snafu that Eugene keeps another canister for himself; a different brand, so he doesn’t get accustomed to the smell. 

“I wanna go in the room by myself today,” Snafu says, when Eugene turns to dip the razor in the sink of warm water. When he turns back, Snafu’s face is neutral, his eyes still upturned to the ceiling.

“Okay,” Eugene says, lightly. 

Snafu’s eyes flick to meet Eugene’s, probing for something there. Whatever it is, he evidently doesn’t find it, as his eyes slide back up and his shoulders relax. “Okay,” he mutters.

Once he’s clean-shaven, Eugene kisses him. One kiss for his mouth, and one more for each cheek. Snafu returns them, and then smoothes his hand over his face and tosses Eugene a rueful smile.

“You’re better at this than you used to be.”

Eugene laughs, cleaning away the stubble in the sink. “But you still asked me to do it.”

Snafu comes up behind him, slipping his arms around Eugene’s waist to pull him back against his bare chest. His newly shaven cheek presses to Eugene’s, smelling spicy and sharp from his shaving foam. “Just an excuse to get you to touch me,” he mutters, and then kisses at the shell of Eugene’s ear. “Thanks for the shave.”

In the waiting room, Eugene sits and flicks through another home-making magazine, surprised at how little he minds not being privy to whatever Snafu and the nurse are talking about. He’s more pleased about Snafu’s turnaround with his mood than anything else, and besides, they’re not long appointments. He’s barely made it past the agony aunt column before Snafu is emerging, bundling his scarf back around his neck as the nurse follows him out.

“Keep at it,” she says, and pats at his shoulder. Eugene watches in quiet amazement as Snafu ducks his head, and then nods. “You’re getting better.”

Eugene waits until Snafu has been armed with a large black coffee, some fifteen minutes later, before he speaks. They’re walking home, brisk because of the cold, Snafu sipping slowly at his coffee. “How’d it go?” Eugene asks, trying to sound like he doesn’t care. A sidelong glance shows Snafu rolling his eyes.

“Obviously we flirted mercilessly,” he drawls, and Eugene grins. Snafu looks handsome; clean-shaven, with the wind tossing his salt-and-pepper curls wild. He’s wearing a ratty old chore jacket that he’s had for years; faded far from the deep navy it had been, and worn threadbare on the elbows, one pocket coming away at the seam. It’s like in that instant, his younger self takes him over; dons that old jacket, pushes that hair from his eyes. Or maybe this version of himself isn’t even that young, maybe it’s just the self that had existed before his hands had started to shake. Either way, it makes Eugene’s heart swell huge in his chest, pressing hard against his throat until it’s hard to swallow.

“Well she’s prettier than me,” Eugene jokes, and Snafu laughs — a real one. That big barking noise Eugene knows he’d be able to pick out of a line-up, if he had to.

“She was,” he agrees, hand shuddering his cup of coffee to his mouth to take a sip. He throws Eugene a sly, playful glance that Eugene only grins at; delighted by this rare good mood. “Got magic hands too.”

That night, Snafu joins Eugene on the floor for his PT. Normally he likes to leave some space between them; does his exercises sat crosslegged on the sofa, or at the kitchen table. Eugene stretches his legs out into the space between them, watching Snafu flex his hand around the soft foam ball the nurse had given him weeks ago. He’s talking about a book he’d read while Eugene was at work, one of Eugene’s old bird manuals from when he was a teenager. Full of delicate, full colour illustrations of all the birds of North America, heavy and huge. Snafu’s blazed his way through all the old favourites on the bookshelf by now, and most of the old unfavourites, so he’s turned his sights on the books he hasn’t yet read. Eugene finds it nice, actually, having Snafu share in his interests.

“You’re in a good mood,” Eugene notes, extending his hands into the space between them to Snafu can grasp them. His grip holds strong. “Hey, pretty good.”

Snafu smiles, and squeezes at Eugene’s fingers. “Hurts less today. The nurse offered me painkillers, but I didn’t take ‘em.”

Eugene hums, eyes on their joined hands. “Those would’ve been nice a few months ago.”

“Nah,” Snafu says, easily. PT finished, he squeezes Eugene’s hand once more and then scoots back, and stands. “The minute you stop feelin’ pain, that’s the dangerous part.” He crosses to the kitchen, and scoops up the pack of smokes he’d abandoned there when they’d gotten home. He lights one, grappling with the lighter for only a second. It’s an improvement — Eugene’s been lighting his cigarettes for so long he feels like Snafu’s gotten too used to it. Earlier, outside the clinic, he’d stood with an unlit cigarette in his mouth for a minute before he realised that he had to light it himself. He draws the flame through, puffing on it, and then says, “Y’know when you’re about to die, it stops hurtin’?”

“You’re not dying,” Eugene reminds him.

“Ha!” Snafu says, and ashes his cigarette in the sink. 

———

The good mood sticks for a few weeks. Snafu’s hands are getting slowly stronger, and as the year begins to wind down, Eugene begins to feel a glimmer of hope at having a normal Christmas together. It’s normally just the two of them for the holidays, unless Eugene’s brother insists on them coming down to Mobile to stay. Secretly, Eugene prefers his and Snafu’s quiet Christmases, and knows Snafu feels the same. 

December drops cold; colder even than that snap earlier in the year that had affected Snafu’s hands so badly. It means they spend a lot of time in bed, trying to avoid the chill that the main room of the apartment has. It means they have a lot of time for each other, now.

It’s one of those chilly mornings when Snafu’s nose nudges at the space behind Eugene’s ear, the tip of it cold from the room. His hands curl over Eugene’s waist, his stomach; hot and gentle on his skin in the warm cocoon of their covers. Eugene comes awake in increments, groaning sleepily as he rolls into Snafu’s touch, his bare chest to Eugene’s back, his mouth to the shell of his ear. 

“Good morning,” Eugene mumbles, eyes closed as he throws a hand back to twist in Snafu’s thick curls. He can feel Snafu’s dick against his ass, hard and insistent as he kisses at Eugene’s neck. “You’re in a good mood.”

“You always get me in one,” Snafu breathes, hand gripping at Eugene’s hip as he presses against him. Eugene’s heart squeezes at the smile he can hear in Snafu’s voice, and drops a hand between his own legs to palm at his dick.

Snafu’s stubbled cheek scrapes over Eugene’s throat, making him shiver. The two of them are twisted up together, buried in the warmth beneath the sheets, so close Eugene can barely tell where he ends and Snafu begins. “You want me?” he murmurs, voice still rough with sleep, eyes still barely open.

He hasn’t woken up to this in a long time. Snafu’s always had a penchant for morning sex, but it’s something that’s waned as his hands had gotten worse. Even now, Eugene can tell they must be paining him — his hand is curled in a loose fist against Eugene’s belly, no longer gripping him hard.

“You smell so good,” Snafu purrs, face pressed to the skin behind Eugene’s ear, hand venturing down to knock Eugene’s aside. He squeezes at Eugene’s dick, makes a noise in his ear when he finds Eugene thickening up for him. “I want you.”

They break apart for only a second, long enough for Eugene to snatch the lube from the bedside drawer before Snafu is gathering him back against his chest again. His voice is quiet when Eugene hesitates with it, a gentle, “Can you —?” that makes Eugene’s heart ache with affection. He preps himself, rolling onto his back so he can slip his fingers inside himself and kiss Snafu at the same time. Snafu seems determined to make up for what his hands don’t have the strength for just yet; kissing Eugene deep and tender as he touches his nipples, his stomach, his balls. Snafu’s big, warm hand gentle on him, giving Eugene something to arch up into as he opens himself up. Keeping up a murmured litany of praise that veers wildly between sweet and filthy. _Look at you,_ and _perfect for me_ , and _need me in you?_ Eugene moans as a reply to each one, feeling hot and flushed down to his nipples, face turned into Snafu’s chest hair as the other man cradles him close. Snafu doesn’t often feel in the mood to top, so it’s a rare treat for Eugene to be able to let himself be pleased so thoroughly. They’re both such old hands at sex with each other by now that it can be as languorous and indulgent or quick and to-the-point as they like it, and Eugene’s in the mood for something indulgent, this morning. Waking up to Snafu sweet and turned on and wanting Eugene’s attention has his heart growing bigger and bigger in his chest, for how rare it is right now. 

Snafu’s fingers nudge against Eugene’s ass, and when he draws his own fingers out, they slip in. He moans, and throws a hand over his face. Snafu huffs a laugh in his ear. “I knew you were ready for me,” he breathes, and kisses at Eugene’s temple as he flexes his fingers inside him. “You were just fuckin’ yourself, huh? Couldn’t wait?”

Eugene lifts a hand to smack at Snafu’s shoulder, caught between shyness and bone-deep want. “Fuck me, then,” he mutters, and Snafu doesn’t need to be told twice. He gathers Eugene back against his chest, the hard, fat length of his dick just teasing at Eugene’s ass for only a second, before he sinks into him without another word. The movement knocks the breath out of Eugene; so used to his own fingers that the sudden fullness of Snafu’s dick has him sinking his nails into his own thigh, toes curling against nothing. Snafu’s forehead presses to the nape of Eugene’s neck, and they stay like that for a moment, breathing together. Eugene’s brain is still not yet caught up, still dreamy right at the edges of his consciousness, just enough that his dick is still only half hard when he brings his hand down to cup himself. But then Snafu rocks into him, and the position has the head of his dick nudging up against Eugene’s prostate, and Eugene feels himself leak wet into his palm as a moan pushes up through him. Snafu moans too, like he can feel Eugene’s pleasure, clutching at him as they melt into a perfect rhythm. 

“Love you like this,” Snafu moans, face tucked close to Eugene’s, doing little more than cuddling him, grinding into his ass. Eugene’s hand is clutched tight in Snafu’s hair, his head tipped back against Snafu’s shoulder as he gives himself over to being fucked. He likes himself like this too. He loves Snafu like this even more. Affectionate and tender, holding Eugene so close it’s like he can’t bear to have even an inch of space come between them. Even when his hands start to get weak from how he’s pulling Eugene back on his dick, he’s still perfect. Eugene rolls Snafu over onto his back, straddles him and sinks back down before he can even really feel the emptiness. And getting fucked by Snafu on his side is good, but this is better; getting to brace his hand to Snafu’s chest and bounce in his lap, getting to watch as pleasure washes over Snafu and then swallows him whole. His eyes are dark with it, big and melting and wild. One hand tangled up in his hair and the other loose to the pillow next to him. The bite-red pout of his mouth open as he watches Eugene, watches him like he couldn’t look away if he tried. 

Eugene squeezes at his dick; still soft and smearing wet through the hair on Snafu’s stomach. “Feel good?” he asks, smoothing his hand over Snafu’s belly, leaning forward to kiss him. Snafu moans in his throat, his hand coming up to hold Eugene to him, to kiss him deeper. His grip has no strength to it, but it doesn’t need it. Eugene would come to him from a look alone. 

“You gonna get off?” Snafu asks, voice low and rasping deep from his chest. His big hand drops from Eugene’s face to his dick, nudging Eugene’s own hand aside. “You want me to blow you?” 

It’s sweet, how Snafu can still care more about Eugene’s orgasm, even when he’s like this. Dick buried deep in Eugene, obviously toeing the edge himself, judging by the glazed darkness of his eyes, the way his hips keep twitching up into Eugene. His eyes close when Eugene rocks himself in Snafu’s lap, the pout of his mouth soft and open. 

“You stay right there,” Eugene breathes, working his hips harder until his thighs are shuddering with the effort, until Snafu’s pressing the crown of his head back against the mattress as he covers his eyes with his hand. That moment before orgasm stretching taut as a rubber band, stretching, stretching —

Eugene laughs when Snafu moans, hand coming to grip Eugene’s hip impossibly hard as he spills inside him. Lip caught between teeth, his free hand tangled up in his own hair. Snafu always looks like he’s in the most exquisite pain when he comes; shivering, eyebrows tugged down, panting on gut-deep moans. Eugene watches in delight, running his hands over Snafu’s chest, tugging at his nipples, doing everything to keep him oversensitive and shuddery even as he relaxes back into the bed. 

“Stop, stop,” Snafu groans, a smile tugging at his mouth even as he bats Eugene’s hands away. Playfully, Eugene leans down to kiss him, snorting at the noise he makes at the movement. His own dick is half-hard now, thickening up as Snafu kisses him back, and palms vaguely at him. It always takes Eugene a long time to get started these days; one of the ways that time has gotten back at him. 

“You want anything?” Snafu adds, after Eugene has come to lie next to him. Eugene smiles at him, nudging close for another kiss. Snafu’s hair is wild, cheeks and ears red, the tilt of his smile lazy and relaxed. He drapes himself against Eugene, kissing him slowly and languidly, going easily when Eugene pushes him back so he can press his hardening dick against Snafu’s thigh. 

“Did you like that?” Eugene murmurs, voice catching in his throat as he rolls his hips against Snafu’s leg. Snafu gives him a pleased, indulgent look, hand cupped around his softening dick as he watches Eugene’s hips work.

“You know I love fuckin’ you,” he replies, and makes a noise when Eugene leans close to kiss him again. “You want my fingers?” he asks, like he’d even be able to. It’s sweet. Eugene just grips at Snafu’s side, and shakes his head, eyes on the way the red head of his dick slips against Snafu’s thigh. He loves doing this after Snafu’s fucked him; the act always leaves him turned-on, but it’s never enough to really get off on. But now he gets to have Snafu all pliant and sleepy, clingy and affectionate and willing to lie back and get rubbed on without a fight. 

Snafu’s fingers twist idly through Eugene hair, smirking lazily at the way he moans and turns his face to kiss at Snafu’s broad palm. “C’mere,” Snafu says, patting Eugene’s ass until he shifts, knee coming to nudge between Snafu’s legs. “Better?” he asks, and Eugene nods, fucking his dick against the thigh he’s now straddling, going easily when Snafu tugs him down for a kiss. 

He comes like that, chest to chest with Snafu’s arms around him, Snafu’s cum between his thighs. Full of him, surrounded by him. Cradled and crushed and kissed, Snafu’s teeth testing his earlobe as Eugene moans and gasps, hips stuttering. 

Eugene rubs himself down in a hot shower before he accepts the cigarette that Snafu offers him; tangled up in their sheets and looking smug, like the cat that got the canary. Handsome, with his grey temples and the lines like rays around his eyes. Eugene quit smoking years ago, but indulges Snafu from time to time. The nicotine always makes his head swim so pleasantly post-orgasm that he can’t refuse. 

“You look so handsome,” Eugene murmurs, and cups Snafu’s cheek. He rolls his eyes, but there’s a light to them that’s been dim for a while, which makes Eugene’s heart squeeze. 

They lie together, quietly, smoking. Snafu still smells like sex; musky and sharp. It makes Eugene want to tuck his face into his neck, his armpit, the hair on his stomach. It’s far too soon for round two, but not too soon to think about it, so Eugene does. Head on Snafu’s stomach, the ashtray cold on his own chest, mind adrift in all the sex they have to catch up on.

“What’re you thinkin’ about?” Snafu asks, when he stretches his arm out to tap his cigarette over the ashtray. Eugene yawns, and hums. 

“Remember how we used to fuck during the war?” he asks, and Snafu splutters on an exhale. Eugene laughs, rolling his head to the side to watch Snafu cough. “Would you go back to it, if you could?”

Snafu snorts, wiping at his streaming eyes with the back of his hand as he tries to regain his composure. Eugene notices how his fingers tremble as he brings his cigarette back to his mouth, but doesn’t say anything. Snafu mutters, “I’d sure as hell think about it.” The smile that follows is full of teeth. 

Eugene laughs. “I bet you would.” 

“Wouldn’t you?” Snafu asks, his free hand combing gently through Eugene’s hair. “The whole we-could-get-caught thing was hot.”

“Maybe for _you_ ,” Eugene says, and Snafu laughs. Eugene feels it rumble up through his chest. Affection is a bright bloom in him. It’s a nice feeling, to know stuff like that doesn’t fade or dull over time. “I like our sex now,” he adds, and takes a drag from his cigarette. Snafu makes a curious noise. 

“Even with my fucked up hands?” he asks, and pokes at Eugene’s shoulder. “And gettin’ you hard these days is like rocket science.”

“You like a challenge,” Eugene retorts, and slaps affectionately at Snafu’s thigh. “I liked us then and I like us now, but there’s somethin’ about fuckin’ the same person for the last twenty years.” He exhales smoke happily up towards the ceiling. After a moment, Snafu snorts, the noise soft and amused. His hands resume their combing through Eugene’s hair.

“Go back in time and tell my young self that, he’ll drop dead,” he mutters, sardonically, but when Eugene glances up at him he’s smiling, eyes faraway. 

The good mood sticks, for a while. Christmas finds them happy and drunk, cosied up inside away from the cold. Eugene gifts Snafu a new pair of leather gloves, dark, buttery leather . Snafu gets him a new wristwatch. They eat Chinese food from the place down the block, and spend the evening making out like teenagers on the sofa, dragged there by the red wine and their happiness. Snafu wears his wrist brace without being asked, now. New Year comes and, like every year, he indulges Eugene just enough to record one resolution next to Eugene’s giant list of them. _Commit to the healing process_ , he scrawls, handwriting made worse by the stiff way the brace makes him hold his hand. 

Eventually, the leaps and bounds become laboured. Dips and valleys, vague set-backs and introductions of new pains that leave Snafu angry and frustrated. Next to huge improvements, small ones mean nothing. Snafu can grip the kettle without it shuddering anymore, but he still can’t carry groceries home when he and Eugene go shopping. He can’t handle weight, and numbness in his pinky is radiating up his arm now, and there’s only so much excitement about the small things that Eugene can project. 

Dejected, he starts spending days in bed again. Eugene puts the things he uses for PT on the bedside table; the hand gripper, the soft ball, the smooth, flat elastic band. He’s not sure if Snafu ever uses them, but there’s little else he can do. You can’t make a forty-five year old man do anything he doesn’t want to; especially when that man is Snafu Shelton. 

He still wears the brace. He and Eugene still sleep curled around each other. It’s the little things that matter. It reminds Eugene of the war, in a strange way. Taking those pockets of happiness and affection when they could come, always aware that they were close to ending at any moment. He and Snafu used to sneak away to the beach on Pavuvu to be with each other; not to fuck, or even to kiss, but to be able to lounge together comfortably, maybe play with each other’s hair. The days following New Year have a similar quality. 

San Francisco thaws. Snafu, does not.

“You haven’t been for weeks,” Eugene says, pacing through the apartment with his eyes darting everywhere, ignoring how Snafu is staring very pointedly at his outside shoes on the carpet. “Jesus, Snafu, have you seen my keys?”

“I don’t want to go anymore,” Snafu mutters, petulantly. He’s sat rigidly at the kitchen table, picking at a bowl of dry cereal with his fingers. Angry. Eugene wouldn’t even have to look at him, wouldn’t even have to hear him speak, to know it. There’s a certain frostiness in the air. 

“Well, tough,” Eugene retorts, flipping up the sofa cushion to glance beneath. A dime stares back at him. The next turns up nothing. The one after that, a button. “Snaf, I’m serious — have you seen them?”

“Just go, I’ll let you in.” 

Eugene glances at Snafu, annoyance prickling through him. “We’re not havin’ this conversation right now.”

Snafu working his gripper slowly with the fingers of the hand unoccupied with the cereal. Eugene watches the tendons in his wrist bunch, and release. “It’s expensive,” he says, after a beat, and Eugene groans. 

“You’re too old to be actin’ like this,” he snaps, and grabs at the coat he’d flung over the back of an armchair. Eugene knows the annoyance will give in to worry in a moment. He needs to be out of the apartment before he buckles in the face of Snafu’s steely, hollow-eyed hopelessness. “I love you,” he says, and pulls Snafu in to kiss at the crown of his head. The man grumbles, but goes easily. “Please be here to let me in.”

“Where else am I gonna go?” he gripes, but Eugene is ten minutes late to work, and too busy running from his own weakening resolve to argue. 

It’s been rough. It will probably continue to be rough. When Eugene gets home later that day, the first thing he sees is his keys, sat innocuously on the kitchen table. Snafu is asleep on his back on the sofa, hands curled on his chest. Around him, the apartment looks like it’s been turned upside down in search of the keys; the bookcase has even been pulled away from the wall by a good foot.

Eugene sighs, and drops his bag by the door. Scoops the keys up and dumps them into his coat pocket, which he in turn dumps over the back of a kitchen chair. Quietly, so as not to wake Snafu, he creeps over the creaky floorboards towards the fridge. When Snafu does wake, the argument from the morning will continue. Eugene isn’t a drinker, but he needs a stiff something to get him through that.

The ice clatters into the tumbler. From across the room, Snafu mumbles, “If you’re offerin’, thanks, Gene.”

“I ain’t offerin’,” Eugene grumbles, but pulls another glass from the cupboard over his head. 

Snafu is sleep-puffy and lethargic when Eugene brings him the drink. The curls at the back of his head are pressed flat from lying on them. He takes the glass with a nod, and then reclines back, settling the whiskey on his chest as his eyes slip closed again.

Silence. The late-afternoon sunlight flooding the room is rich and orange, gentle as it lays itself over Snafu’s face. His face is dark with stubble, the skin under his eyes dark from sleeplessness. Silently, Eugene gives himself over from annoyance into worry. It’s hard to stay mad, when he looks so small.

“Lost track of time,” Snafu croaks, eventually, and the ice in his glass clinks as he tilts it to his mouth. “You’re home early?”

Eugene glances at his watch. “Not really.” 

Snafu hums. The glass pendant he’d hung in front of the large kitchen windows spins in some invisible draft, sending rainbows bouncing around the apartment as the light shatters through it. They dance over Snafu’s still face, over the harsh black fabric of his wrist brace. Quietly, Eugene gets up from his seat in the armchair across from Snafu, and comes to sit on the end of the sofa. 

“Have you been asleep long?” he asks, setting his glass down on the coffee table for a second to ease Snafu’s feet into his lap. His toes flex against Eugene’s thigh as he stretches, the ice clinking again with the movement. 

“No idea,” he mumbles, and then scrubs a hand over his face. “Pass me a smoke?”

Eugene passes him one, and then lights it too. Snafu puffs on it to draw the flame through, then plucks it from his mouth, exhales. The smoke hangs still in the orange light. “Where were my keys?” Eugene asks, and the corner of Snafu’s mouth quirks.

“In the freezer.” He snorts, and takes another sip of whiskey. “I dunno what goes through your head sometimes.”

“I could say the same for you,” Eugene murmurs, and they fall quiet. A book is on the floor next to the sofa; an old illustrated encyclopaedia of South American birds that Snafu had gotten him years ago. Eugene tilts his head to look at it. “You’re really into my bird books at the moment, huh?”

Snafu shrugs, eyes closed again, smoke like a strange halo around his head. The ice is melting in his glass, warmed by the hand cradling it close to his collarbones. “I like ‘em.” And then, “Gene, I meant what I said this mornin’.”

The refracted light through the strung-up crystal bounces hypnotically over Snafu’s face; shuttered and expressionless, smooth in faux-sleep. Eugene swallows, and looks away from him, down into the whiskey he’s cradling between two hands. He tips the glass, watches the liquid shift, and sighs. “You’re improvin’. I don’t know why you’d want to stop when you’re improvin’.”

“I’ve stopped gettin’ better,” Snafu murmurs. His eyelids flicker. The thrown rainbows arch wildly over them. “This is me now.” His hand shudders as he drains the rest of his whiskey in one swallow. The ice cube clatters back into the bottom of the glass. 

“You don’t know that —”

“The nurse said a couple weeks ago,” Snafu says, his voice emotionless and still rough from sleep. “Said all that’s left now is maintainin’. Reckon I can do that without the copay.” He laughs, humourlessly. 

Eugene opens his mouth, and closes it. His mind is blank. Between a long day at work, plus a stressful morning, Snafu’s argument is rendering him silent. In a low voice, he asks, “Snaf, what’s bringing this on?”

Snafu doesn’t reply right away. Instead he smokes his cigarette, a crease formed between his brows now. Eugene drains his glass, and rises to go pour himself another, snagging Snafu’s easily from his fingers as he goes. 

Clatter of ice. Glug of the bottle. The wash of whiskey taking away that frosty, uneven layer of the ice cube.

“I feel like a burden on you,” Snafu mutters, when Eugene returns, before he even sits back down. A glass in each hand, standing there stupidly; still with his fucking tie on, still with his fucking shoes on. Snafu’s voice wobbles as he adds, “I mean, I can’t even —” he breaks off, massages his fingers into his eyes. When he speaks again, his voice is less tight, more even. “I can’t even light my own smokes. I can’t even shave without cuttin’ myself.”

“But you’re better than you were,” Eugene insists, his voice small. “Snaf, this is just a slump, you can’t make decisions when you’re —”

Snafu extends his hand. It shudders in the thin orange air between them. Absently, refracted light dances over his palm. Eugene sets the tumbler of whiskey on top of it, and watches the rainbow smear through the amber liquid. “You work all day, and come home and deal with me like this,” he says, and his eyes are open now. The sleepiness has gone. They’re sharp and sad and resigned. “I don’t wanna be this person to you anymore.”

Eugene sits. They drink their whiskey. The sun sinks lower and lower in the sky, the orange light turning cooler, bluer, as they melt together on the sofa. Shadows pooling in the corners of the room, in the hollows of Snafu’s face. Eugene works his thumb at Snafu’s wrist, drunk and feeling blue, unsure how to help. He still has his tie on. He still has his goddamn shoes on.

“You ain’t a burden to me,” Eugene murmurs, when he finds his voice. He knows Snafu won’t believe it now, but it’s important to say anyway. He hates to think of Snafu looking back on this time, and wondering why Eugene hadn’t contradicted him. 

Snafu doesn’t reply. Eugene hadn’t expected him to. He hadn’t needed him to.

———

Work gets busy around the same time that Snafu slips back into lethargy. A colleague of Eugene’s ends up out on sick leave for the entirety of March, leaving Eugene to juggle his own classes as well as picking up a handful of the other man’s too. It means long days on campus, the afternoons running through into the evenings without Eugene even noticing, not until he glances up from his papers to find the office dim around him. It means bringing work home, it means being sat at the kitchen table with it while his heart tugs away from his body towards the bedroom. 

He’s overworked, he’s exhausted. Being pulled once again being work and home in such an unpleasant way that Eugene begins to think seriously about taking time off. His head and heart are always at home, worrying after Snafu, even as his body and mouth move on autopilot around the university. Snafu isn’t being demanding; quite the opposite, but still Eugene feels guilty for not being there for him as much as he wants to be. Snafu sits at home and reads all day, the curtains drawn over the windows, chain-smoking. At dinnertime he’ll eat what’s put in front of him and he’ll drink a few fingers of whiskey and fall asleep on the sofa. He’s still wearing his brace. Eugene doesn’t know what’s a good sign and what’s a bad one anymore. Sometimes he’s affectionate, playful, his usual self. Sometimes he’ll go rigid when Eugene tucks himself up behind his back to sleep. 

_Tell me what’s going on!_ Eugene wants to yell, but doesn’t. Snafu reveals all things, with time. Like shrapnel working its way out of a body, coaxing Snafu to talk about his feelings requires patience. However Eugene has never been good with patience, and loses hours of sleep to staring at the back of Snafu’s head, wondering what could possibly be going on in there to have him pull away like this. It’s an unfamiliar feeling, to run up against some aspect of Snafu he still doesn’t yet know. How is it possible that he keeps discovering these wells of secretive sadness in him? Where do they end? 

“Stop worryin’ about me,” Snafu will say, unprompted. He can somehow always tell. His hand will smooth over Eugene’s nape, firm and comforting, and all Eugene can think about is how it must hurt him. They’re fracturing, again. Snafu stays up all night doing god-knows-what wandering the house. He’s still reading Eugene’s books on birds; has worked himself through to Central America now. Sometimes Eugene wakes in the middle of the night to listen to him pad through the apartment, the sound of bare feet on hardwood floors. 

In April, Eugene comes home from a relatively light day of work, and knows something is different the minute he steps over the threshold into the apartment.

It all looks normal. The late afternoon sunlight laying in buttery slices across the floor. Their breakfast dishes, drying in the rack by the sink. The apartment smells like burned toast and spring air, the curtains moving in the slight breeze from an open window. 

So why does Eugene feel like something’s off? 

He drops his bag onto the armchair as he passes, tugging at the tight knot of his tie as he calls, “Snaf?” His voice bounces off the walls. From the back of the apartment, he hears a noise, and his heart leaps up into his throat.

Panic has always been Eugene’s go-to in times of trouble. It got him through an entire war, after all, and ever since it’s felt like his body has been hard-wired to jump straight to it whenever something freaks him out. It means that when he slams open the bedroom door to find Snafu sat cross-legged on the bed with a bird in his hands, it takes Eugene a beat to re-orient. 

He blinks. Snafu at least has the good grace to look guilty.

“What is that,” Eugene murmurs, the gears in his head still turning. Snafu is looking at him like he’s lost his mind.

“It’s a budgie.”

Evenly, Eugene replies, “I can see that.”

They regard each other from opposite sides of the room. In Snafu’s hands, the budgie coos.

“I’m gonna go get a drink,” Eugene says, and turns around and does just that. 

He should’ve seen something like this coming. Nothing gets fed into Snafu’s head without him getting some harebrained idea from it. Six years ago he’d caught a screening of _The 400 Blows_ at a local theatre, and had been so captivated by it he’d bought a Remington and attempted to write a movie of his own, entirely in pidgin French. Jesus, if Eugene thought this whole saga was giving them both sleepless nights — that one was another thing entirely. The problem is, the ideas never match completely to the mother of the idea. It’s what makes him so unpredictable. 

“A budgie,” Eugene says, flatly. His eyes are on the bird, which is sat rather comfortably on Snafu’s shoulder. A little blue thing, with a splash of grey across its bright-eyed little face.

“Her name is Smidgen,” Snafu says, and Eugene nods, and flicks his thumbnail against the side of his whiskey glass.

“Smidgen,” he repeats, and smears his hand over his face. “Snaf, did you buy her a cage? Food?”

“She doesn’t need one,” Snafu murmurs, turning his head to try and see her in her spot on his shoulder. “Birds shouldn’t be caged.”

Eugene groans, and buries his face in his hands. The problem with Snafu is that he loves animals dearly, which doesn’t sound like a problem, except that he rarely thinks about what it takes to keep an animal beyond the acquiring of said animal. “Where did you even get it?” he asks, muffled by his palms. He still has his shoes on. Why is this becoming a running theme?

“I went for a walk,” Snafu says, laying his hands out flat on the table. Eugene pillows his cheek on his knuckles to listen. “And called into that pet shop in Chinatown — the one we got —”

“— Elizabeth from, sure.” Eugene rubs at his eyes. Elizabeth was a flea-ridden little kitten with a belly full of worms that Snafu had acquired about a month after they’d moved to San Francisco. Eugene hadn’t even had a job at the time. Snafu had gotten the job his injury had forced him out of to pay the vet bills. 

“She looked sweet, and quiet,” Snafu murmurs, and Eugene glances up, defeated. “I dunno, I just saw her and I got this gut feelin’.” His mouth twists with emotion. The bird tugs at one of his curls, yellow beak buried in his hair. Eugene feels his heart open up, and groans. This is why Snafu always manages to get away with it. Eugene loves him too much to put his foot down.

“You gotta get her a cage,” he says, tiredly, and pushes back his chair to fill his glass with water. The whiskey has beat a path straight from his empty stomach to his now-aching head. “And food, Snaf. And all the other shit tame birds need, okay?” 

Snafu beams at him, and Eugene just rolls his eyes. He’s a total pushover, he knows. Unfortunately, so does Snafu. 

Smidge and Snafu become quickly inseparable. So much so that Eugene had to put his foot down and disallow the cage in the bedroom, once they had bought it. She rides around his shoulder, hops between his hands and the furniture as easy as anything, seems to love being cosied up in the crook of his neck. Eugene can’t pretend to keep the fed-up act going, and doesn’t want to besides. It warms his heart to see Snafu talking to her, kissing at her, carrying her around all day. She adores him just as much as he adores her. And it’s comforting, to know that Snafu isn’t spending the long days that Eugene’s at work alone. 

Despite Eugene’s early misgivings, Smidge seems to be doing Snafu some good. Ever since Eugene had come home and discovered them, he’s been brighter, more animated. Those long weeks of worrying over him seem like a bad dream; Snafu’s no longer as sullen and withdrawn as he had been. He chats easily again; mostly about the bird, but Eugene’s happy to listen just as long as Snafu keeps smiling.

“I’m thinkin’ ‘bout building her some ramps so she can get up stuff without me liftin’ her,” he’s saying, thumbs smoothing over her little head as they sit together on the sofa. Snafu’s feet are in Eugene’s lap, his back to the armrest and the bird cosy in his cupped hands. His fingers shudder very slightly as he unfurls them enough for her to hop away if she wanted to. Smidge stays put, eyes closed as Snafu pets at her. 

“Do you think she knows I’m her dad too?” Eugene asks, eyes on the bird. The radio plays in the background, some syrupy song that fits Eugene’s mood. 

“You’re the mom,” Snafu says, thumbs stilling in their stroking. “And she knows. She’s smart.”

“I ain’t the mom,” Eugene mutters, heart swelling big in his chest as he watches the two of them. It’s been the most peaceful few weeks since the year had turned; slowly, he can feel that rift that had been opening up between them beginning to close. 

—————

Eugene can smell the food cooking in the hallway before he even makes it up the last set of stairs to their apartment. Something spicy, savoury — his stomach rumbles as he digs his key from his pocket to let himself in.

“Smells amazing,” Eugene calls, in lieu of a hello, wobbling on one foot with his hand braced to the wall as he tugs on his laces. 

“Won’t be ready for a while,” Snafu calls back, to which Eugene rolls his eyes. Snafu has a habit of starting elaborate meals only when he gets hungry; by the time it’s done they’re ravenous, and eat it so quickly they barely taste it at all. 

Eugene comes to join him in the kitchen, slipping an arm around Snafu’s waist to kiss him. Snafu pats at his cheek, and they disconnect; Snafu goes back to chopping vegetables, and Eugene crosses to the fridge to grab a beer. There’s something missing from the scene, something Eugene can’t put his finger on until he glances again at Snafu, and realises that Smidge isn’t in her usual spot on his shoulder.

“Where’s the baby?” he asks, and Snafu snorts. He shudders a handful of chopped celery over to the pan on the stove.

“In her cage,” he mutters, a crease between his brows as he picks the knife up once again. Eugene frowns, watching him closely. “She doesn’t wanna hang out today, figured I’d give her some alone time.”

“What happened?” Eugene asks, crossing the kitchen to nudge Snafu out of the way of the chopping board. He surrenders the knife silently, easily, stepping away as his hand comes up to massage at his wrist. They’re shaking visibly, today. Eugene shakes his head, and sets about chopping carrots. “You shouldn’t be doin’ repetitive shit like this,” he adds.

“She gets a little spooked when I’m shaky,” Snafu mutters, eyes on his hands as he eases his thumb over the tendons in his wrist. “Doesn’t like me holdin’ her.”

There’s naked hurt in his voice. Eugene shoots him a careful glance, only to find Snafu staring out through the window, eyes faraway. He looks tired, unshaven. Eugene’s heart aches silently in his chest. “Maybe you should start doin’ the PT again,” he suggests, gently, going back to chopping. The kitchen is quiet around them; just the bubbling of the stew on the stove, the faint burble of the radio from the other room. Snafu leaves it on when Smidge is alone. Eugene figures he must’ve run to the store to get out of the apartment.

Snafu sighs, and passes behind Eugene with a hand to the small of his back, going for his cigarettes. “Maybe,” he says, and then the sound of him rolling the flint of his lighter, over and over. Eugene disconnects from the vegetable chopping to light his cigarette for him, squeezing Snafu’s arm at the grateful look he throws him. “I guess it can’t hurt, huh?” he adds, mumbled around the cigarette. 

“Only enough to know you ain’t dead,” Eugene says, and smiles at Snafu’s eye roll. 

While the food simmers away on the stove, Eugene and Snafu sit down together to do their first round of PT exercises in months. A glass of whiskey sits at Snafu’s side; his reward for even digging out his old abandoned PT stuff. Eugene sips slowly from his own, back to the coffee table as he watches Snafu move slowly through his exercises. He’d coaxed Smidge from her cage, and she now sits on Snafu’s shoulder, nibbling at his hair. Watching the two of them, wrapped up warm in the low lamplight, Eugene feels the same stirrings of hope that he’d last felt back before Christmas. 

“No progress is linear,” Eugene says, later, laid up on the couch with Snafu against his chest. Smidge is puffed up with her eyes closed under Snafu’s chin, happy with Eugene’s hand smoothing over her back. “Shit, sometimes I still think we’re recoverin’ from the war.”

Snafu hums, eyes closed and body relaxed against Eugene’s. They’re both warm, and sleepy, bellies finally full from their late dinner. Both of them a little tipsy, if only from their quiet celebrations over Snafu picking his exercises back up. “I guess I lost sight of the end,” Snafu mumbles. He shifts, scooping Smidge up to peer at her. She blinks sleepily back at them both. “It’s hard to accept that — y’know.”

Eugene smoothes his fingers through Snafu’s curls. “I know.”

He thinks briefly if he should worry about whether Snafu will ever go back to work, whether he’ll ever be able to pass through life without pain. Whether the peaks and the valleys of this process will continue. But then Snafu pops Smidge on his head, the perfect height for her to peer at Eugene, and Eugene decides it’s easier to laugh than to worry. He’s spent too much time doing more of the former than the latter. 

They do Snafu’s PT exercises nightly, following that. Sat on the living room floor, always a beer or something good to eat to accompany them, Smidge tucked away and snoozing in Snafu’s neck. Spring oozes gradually into summer, and with the warmer weather plus the PT, Snafu’s hands begin to improve. Smidge grows bolder around the apartment, which is beginning to look more and more like a madhouse as Snafu fashions things to turn it into a budgie’s paradise. It seems to be a good way to occupy his time and his hands; not enough to hurt him, but just enough to challenge him. She chirps along to the radio, and makes kissing noises back at Snafu, which delights him. Sometimes Eugene sits grading papers at the table, listening to them chatter back and forth to each other which an affectionate bemusement that Snafu always manages to inspire in him. 

They still sleep curled up around each other every night, even when it gets so hot it’s hard to stand it. Snafu’s hands curled close to his chest, fingers linked with Eugene’s own.

**Author's Note:**

> it's so funny, while i was writing this i was also suffering with some really bad pain in my wrists from writing/overworking them. art imitates life! thanks so much for reading :~)


End file.
